4 ms·

We Are What We Do Not Automate

21 points by brm 18y ago

sh1mmer 18y ago
This is a great article. In summary, as technology progresses to the point where most (if not all) common tasks can be automated the uniqueness of the UI will be what is left to the user to control.
ojbyrne 18y ago
It's an interesting article, but reminds me of the divide between techies and the great unwashed. When I buy a car I want a 5-speed, and stuff that, when it breaks, I can fix. I want a spare tire, even if there are run-flat tires - I like long road trips. I do recognize that my tastes are not mainstream, but I value companies that also recognize that. EDIT: Ok, maybe not fix myself, but I appreciate stuff that's cheap to get fixed, and maybe a little old-school. There's not too much that I can actually fix, but there's a larger constellation of stuff that I understand the cost of.
- kirse 18y ago
  Driving a manual is just more fun, more engaging, and makes you focus more on driving. It's just better. =) I had to put up with a slushbox rental recently and finally understood how exactly people can fall asleep at the wheel.
  - ojbyrne 18y ago
    I agree, though there were some moments at stoplights in the north part of SF that I, um, didn't.
  - pistoriusp 18y ago
    I agree with you, but I wouldn't mind having an automatic right now. I've been spending ~2 hours in traffic for the last month.
- derefr 18y ago
  Do you know how much a tire weighs? That weight is gas you could be saving by not taking it along. It's environmentally-friendly to leave the tire-swap for when you get to the station (because you will have to go to a station after you get a flat either way--if you were carrying a spare before, now you won't be, and that's just as unsafe as you felt before.)
  - HeyLaughingBoy 18y ago
    I sometimes wonder if people who think of minutiae like this ever consider losing weight because they'll use less gas by not toting the extra pounds around...
jamesbritt 18y ago
Brian Eno said that culture is those things we don't have to do. We have to eat, but we don't have to eat with forks; we may have to cover our bodies for some protection against weather, but we don't have to have drape ourselves with some tribal logo.
derefr 18y ago
I figured, by the headline, that this was going to be an article on evolutionary psychology: "conscious thought", in a way the user-interface to our own bodies, is all just stuff that we've just started learning how to do, and hasn't had time to work its way into our instinctual (automated) processes. The scary thought behind that is that, eventually, we might evolve past consciousness, without our external behaviour changing at all (self-driving cars? Self-driving people.) All our acts of culture and art and science will be so ingrained into our genetic structure that we'll start doing them without having to meditate on the how of it (akin, oddly, to spiritual Enlightenment or Nirvana, through "mindfulness." For a more down-to-earth view, a permanent "flow" state.) We'll all, technically, become http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophical_zombie http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophical_zombie s, until something shakes up our culture enough that we need to think about what we're doing again. Hopefully, though, we can keep introducing those shake-ups from within.

21 points by brm 18y ago

This is a great article. In summary, as technology progresses to the point where most (if not all) common tasks can be automated the uniqueness of the UI will be what is left to the user to control.

ojbyrne 18y ago

It's an interesting article, but reminds me of the divide between techies and the great unwashed. When I buy a car I want a 5-speed, and stuff that, when it breaks, I can fix. I want a spare tire, even if there are run-flat tires - I like long road trips. I do recognize that my tastes are not mainstream, but I value companies that also recognize that. EDIT: Ok, maybe not fix myself, but I appreciate stuff that's cheap to get fixed, and maybe a little old-school. There's not too much that I can actually fix, but there's a larger constellation of stuff that I understand the cost of.

kirse 18y ago
Driving a manual is just more fun, more engaging, and makes you focus more on driving. It's just better. =) I had to put up with a slushbox rental recently and finally understood how exactly people can fall asleep at the wheel.
- ojbyrne 18y ago
  I agree, though there were some moments at stoplights in the north part of SF that I, um, didn't.
- pistoriusp 18y ago
  I agree with you, but I wouldn't mind having an automatic right now. I've been spending ~2 hours in traffic for the last month.
derefr 18y ago
Do you know how much a tire weighs? That weight is gas you could be saving by not taking it along. It's environmentally-friendly to leave the tire-swap for when you get to the station (because you will have to go to a station after you get a flat either way--if you were carrying a spare before, now you won't be, and that's just as unsafe as you felt before.)
- HeyLaughingBoy 18y ago
  I sometimes wonder if people who think of minutiae like this ever consider losing weight because they'll use less gas by not toting the extra pounds around...

jamesbritt 18y ago

Brian Eno said that culture is those things we don't have to do. We have to eat, but we don't have to eat with forks; we may have to cover our bodies for some protection against weather, but we don't have to have drape ourselves with some tribal logo.

derefr 18y ago

I figured, by the headline, that this was going to be an article on evolutionary psychology: "conscious thought", in a way the user-interface to our own bodies, is all just stuff that we've just started learning how to do, and hasn't had time to work its way into our instinctual (automated) processes. The scary thought behind that is that, eventually, we might evolve past consciousness, without our external behaviour changing at all (self-driving cars? Self-driving people.) All our acts of culture and art and science will be so ingrained into our genetic structure that we'll start doing them without having to meditate on the how of it (akin, oddly, to spiritual Enlightenment or Nirvana, through "mindfulness." For a more down-to-earth view, a permanent "flow" state.) We'll all, technically, become http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophical_zombie http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophical_zombie s, until something shakes up our culture enough that we need to think about what we're doing again. Hopefully, though, we can keep introducing those shake-ups from within.